Meaning
Extremely drunk; visibly staggering and unsteady from alcohol. It is an informal, humorous expression, usually said of people rather than things, and it implies a comic loss of balance rather than mere tippling. Slightly dated in flavour but still widely understood, especially in narrative and jokey uses. Informal and humorous; a little old-fashioned but immediately understood. Regional use: General English.
Origin
A genuine piece of sailor slang. In seamanship a sheet is not the sail but the rope or chain holding down a sail's lower corner; a loose sheet lets the sail flap and the vessel stagger like a drunk. The earliest known print use is American: the journal of the English-born preacher Francis Asbury records 'two sheets in the wind' at an entry dated 1813 (published 1815). The three-sheet form appears in Pierce Egan's Real Life in London in 1821, and period sources show a jokey sliding scale from one sheet (tipsy) upward. The original wording was 'in the wind'; the now-standard 'to the wind' came later. Whether the phrase is originally British or American is unsettled, since Asbury emigrated from England in his twenties.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- a sheet in the wind
- a sheet in the wind's eye
- three sheets in the wind
- two sheets to the wind
Usage Examples
- By the end of the reception the best man was three sheets to the wind and needed help finding the exit.
- Dad gets three sheets to the wind whenever his old shipmates come to visit.
- She was three sheets to the wind by midnight, so we took her car keys and called a cab.